Traditionally as organisations have sought to remain relevant in these intensely uncertain, highly competitive and irreversibly disruptive environments, they have pursued M&A and restructuring as vehicles for organisational repositioning. While traditional industries see M&A as means of individual survival and growth in slow growth, but highly competitive environment, M&A has been pursued with equal vigour in the vibrant technology industries as means to access latest and emerging technologies and straddle key elements of value chain. And M&A has been accepted as almost inevitable as companies pursue global scale and scope. The multibillion-dollar Vodafone India-Idea merger announced in March 2017 is a strategic response to the tectonic changes seen in the Indian telecom landscape, though the outcome—even after three years—is hugely uncertain. The global scale and sweep of M&A are humongous – annual global M&A announcements indicating strategic intent are worth several trillion dollars, higher than the GDPs of all but a handful of countries. Even during the current Covid-times several Indian companies such as WIPRO (Capco, Ampion), First Source (PatientMatters), Tata Sons (BigBasket), Piramal Group (DHFL) etc. have made acquisition moves. While seeking growth through M&A, companies across the world also pursue the opposite—contraction through divestiture and de-merger (spin-off) as they constantly endeavour to realign and rebalance their business portfolios and refocus their energies and resources. We believe that once the world ambles out of the turbulent Covid era, there would be unprecedented scale of corporate restructuring by the weakened players and opportunistic acquisitions by the stronger players that have managed to weather the turbulence and have positioned themselves for the economic upturn.

Despite its immense popularity, M&A carry huge execution risks - attested by the fact that the success rate in M&A is just about 20%-30%. Yet there are organizations that have developed a habit of acquiring successfully and creating value consistently. Indian companies like elsewhere have demonstrated mixed results. While a company such as Sun Pharma had grown to become a USD 30b-value company primarily through decades-long effective M&A strategies, the Ranbaxy merger of 2015 – its largest transactions to-date – only underscores the risks, even for the experienced. Dozens of Indian companies across different sizes, industries and management stables have also come to grief from ill-advised, debt financed cross-border deals necessitating further restructuring. Yet avoiding M&A as a strategist choice may not be an option for long; rather learning to effectively and efficiently manage the same becomes the key differentiator for success.

Given the sheer sweep of the restructuring phenomenon, most of us also tend to be impacted by these forces, be it as investors or investment bankers, or as employees of the companies involved, or as members of the society at large. It is equally important to understand the key macro-economic and firm-level forces driving the restructuring initiatives at individual companies that could eventually lead to massive structural transformation of industries and even economies at large.

Beneath the veneer of hype and hoopla and the facade of shareholder value, various dimensions—strategic brilliance, financial wizardry, legal acrobatics, organisational dilemmas, plain clash of giant CEO egos and old-style politics—all play themselves out. IIMA's Mergers, Acquisitions, and Restructuring (MA&R) programme seeks to provide an appreciation of this multi-faceted phenomenon—something which would be at the top of any CEO's agenda.

In this Programme, the participants will be exposed to the perspectives and skillsets required for effective management of the MA&R process. Through a series of real-life and exciting case studies, the participants will get a “handle” on the entire MA&R value chain from planning through deal execution to the post-transaction phases. The programme will thus deal with the key issues, viz., the strategic rationale and business case, key value drivers, target identification and evaluation in terms of strategic, financial and cultural fits, regulatory and deal structuring issues.

The learning experience will be intense with the pedagogy consisting of case analysis, faculty-led and peer-to-peer discussions and group work. The participants will explore a wide range of acquisition and restructuring situations to develop an understanding of value creation through mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring.

Programme Schedule

The programme will be delivered in a Live Online format over the Zoom platform.